28 January 2008

some interesting intrigue is to be had in reading the recently posted city of alexandria, la. council agenda for tuesday, 29 january 2008:

5) Introduction of an ordinance authorizing the Mayor to enter into a Professional Services Agreement with KJA Communications Group for the maintenance and production of programming for the City’s Government Access Channel and development of the City’s web site.

we've raised some of these questions before and always being in need to something to post, this gave us a good opportunity to point out the scam again.

first off, we reference the alexandria, la. mayor, jacques roy and kja communications group, owner david pugh, as "pals" because, you might remember the article the town talk published back in 2007 -- perhaps in the summer or fall abut some sort of cook off that was going on at the time in alexandria. it was a chili cook off or a bar-b-que cook off we dont remember exactly which.

anyway, the article included a photograph of mayor roy and mr. pugh working the same booth together. so, this would seem to suggest to a reasonable minded person some sort of relationship between these two; above and beyond the professional realm.

next, we turn our attention to the official website of and for the city and citizens of alexandria, la., located at www.cityofalexandriala.com

this is where things get weird because when we do a whois of that domain we learn that instead of it being registered to the city of alexandria -- the domain is actually registered to kja communications group. why this is, no one has ever explained.

now lets see what kind of job kja communications group has done in managing the city of alexandria's website.

according to our calculations mayor roy took office 420 days ago and yet as you can see there is still no mayoral welcome letter on the city's website. if kja communications group was such a great company then why havent they, by now, had a copywriter or someone, anyone, compose some generic welcome letter and copy and paste the text into that page and press publish? - this is just one example. yet the mayor and city council is going to give this company another contract to manage the city's website.

if you do a google domain search of the city's website you will see that ken juneau and associates and its successor kja communications group, has held many, many city contracts. switching keywords around a bit and doing another domain search you will easily locate actions that the alexandria city council took as far back as 25 november 2003:

26) To consider final adoption of an ordinance authorizing the Mayor to enter into an agreement with KJA Communications Group to begin Phase IV enhancement of the City of Alexandria Website.

27) To consider final adoption of an ordinance authorizing the Mayor to enter into an agreement with KJA Communications Group to begin enhancement of the City’s Government Access Channel.

so we see that kja communications group has been in charge of the city's website and public access channel four, for years and years. yet just about every city council committee meeting and sometimes council meetings we see councilman myron lawson talking about upgrading the public access channel and the city's website "take it to the next level," as councilman lawson is so fond of reciting.

as far back as 19 august 2003, alexandria city council minutes state that "Mr. Lawson, Chairman of the Economic Development committee stated that the committee met with Ken Juneau & Associates concerning the City’s web page and other matters."

its plain to see that kja communications group isn't doing anything with respect to the city's website or channel four. isn't it a crime to both take payment for and to use taxpayer funds no less, for nothing? yet the city wants to give kja communications group another contract - its crazy. common sense and an idea of economics would tell a sane person that the city's website and channel four should be operated in house by city employees and not by an outside company.

as far as channel four goes - thats a total scam for the city to pay an outside company to do anything with channel four. as the city has shown at least two (one | two) times over the past year if there is any city business that despite the citizenry being entitled to see, if they dont want the public to see it, they simply will not broadcast it.

so where is all the money is going that the city is paying mr. david pugh and kja communications group? well here is a 01 november 2007 story from the town talk that might give you a clue. [.rtf]